John Nance - Headwind

The magistrate sat back as if struck. “Indeed. And just when I was prepared to expect you gentlemen to adhere to those boring procedures prescribed by law. But why should we stand on legality, eh? What do we think this is, a court? Very well, Sir William, I shall grant Mr. Reinhart an audience of five minutes, and that is that. Mr. Reinhart?”

Jay got to his feet feeling entirely off-balance and unprepared. “Yes, your honor… ah, I mean, Your Lordship.”

“I’m not addressed as ‘Your Lordship,’ Mr. Reinhart, and you needn’t be concerned with the courtesies of our court,” the magistrate said, leaning forward and gesturing with his gavel, “since you are not a member of this bar and are not required to follow them. Not a whit of what you have to say will legally amount to a tinker’s damn anyway, but as a courtesy to your client, and to yourself, you may address the court for five minutes.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jay said.

The judge sat back with an expression of mild amazement, his right hand cupping his face.

“May it please this court,” Jay began, “I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this matter. I shall be very brief. And I should tell you that I am very experienced in international practice and fully understand the mandates of the Treaty Against Torture under which this Interpol warrant is presented. We are not arguing that President Harris is protected by the Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity. That doctrine does not apply to such crimes as charged, as was properly established in the Pinochet case. What this court should consider, however, is that the charges in this warrant are patently false and do not state a sufficient criminal allegation to be afforded the full faith and credit of a British warrant. Peru alleges that President Harris personally ordered the para-military raid against a suspected Peruvian illegal drug factory that led to the admitted torture and murder of eighty-four men, women, and children. It was a horrible act, to be sure. Yet Peru has failed utterly to offer any proof whatsoever in this forum, or any other, that connects the order to commence this raid with any knowledge President Harris could possibly have possessed that torture and murder were to be used by the hired mercenaries who carried out this action. President Harris issued a blanket order to the Central Intelligence Agency… called a ‘finding’ under American procedure… that called for the CIA to search out and destroy the drug-making capability of the subject factory. That order is a matter of record in American archives. There is virtually nothing in that order, or anything else that Peru has presented, which indicates that President Harris knew, or could have known, that the CIA agent in charge in Peru was going to hire a gang of cutthroats and instruct them to do what they did. Sir, in the utter absence of any evidence to support this warrant, and under the common law and the rules of criminal procedure of Great Britain, Peru has a required burden to present a case that has some connection with the crime, and they have failed that burden. In the absence of such threshold offering of proof, this court should deny the warrant.”

“Is that your statement, Mr. Reinhart?” the magistrate said, still sitting back, his chin on his hand.

“Yes, sir,” Jay said, feeling completely ineffective.

“Thank you.” The magistrate sat up. “Now, if you gentlemen don’t mind terribly, I will proceed to issue my ruling and get on to the press of daily chores before this court.”

Stuart Campbell had sat down as Jay spoke. He stood suddenly.

“Sir?”

The magistrate’s face registered complete surprise. “Sir William? Whatever more can be said, sir?”

“I should appreciate the opportunity to answer, for the record, of course, the good Mr. Reinhart’s challenge to the evidentiary basis of this warrant.”

“Must you, Sir William?”

“Yes, sir, indeed I must.”

“I shall warn you again that this bears in no way on my ruling. You don’t need to answer his statement. What he said is immaterial to this case at this juncture. Need I remind you that this merely concerns the arrest warrant, not extradition?”

“I understand, sir, but this is a very serious case involving international legal precedent, and one which the world will be watching with great interest. It behooves us, I think, to make the record complete.”

“Oh, very well. Proceed,” the judge replied, sitting back and laying his gavel on the bench before him.

“Thank you,” Campbell began, turning to look at Jay as he picked up a thick sheaf of papers. “I shall provide a copy of this brief for the court, and for Mr. Reinhart, but let me summarize. Mr. Reinhart alleges that there is no connection between President Harris’s general orders to the CIA and the ultimate infliction of torture and death on the occupants of a rural building which, although serving as an illegal drug lab, also contained the wives and children of many of the workers… all of whom were tortured. In fact, in the torturous interrogation that proceeded over two days, some of the men, women, and even children were beheaded, many of the women and girls raped and brutalized, and ultimately all of them who were still living were then locked in the structure and burned to death. Only one person, a young girl, escaped to tell the tale. She was fifteen. She had been raped and maimed and left for dead with the others.”

Nigel White was on his feet. “Sir, I must object to this shameless recitation of horror stories in place of legal substance!”

“Sustained, indeed!” the magistrate snapped. “Sir William? No more of that.”

“Yes, sir. My point is this. The government of Peru has uncovered proof that on the nineteenth of November of that year, fourteen days before the raid began, President John Harris was briefed in the Oval Office of the White House by a CIA covert operations chief named Barry Reynolds, that there was a group of former ‘Shining Path’ guerrilla mercenaries who had agreed to conduct the raid and the destruction of the drug factory for the price of one million dollars, U.S. Mr. Reynolds left the Oval Office thirty minutes after he entered with the verbal approval of the President of the United States to conduct the raid and to pay for it from secret CIA funds. In that briefing, Mr. Reynolds had provided ample warning that the only force available to carry out such a raid were professional thugs, and that a high risk existed that they would be brutal and bloodthirsty in their work, and might well disregard their instructions and maim and torture the occupants of the factory before killing everyone. President Harris, having been informed of this and advised by Mr. Reynolds to disapprove the raid, nevertheless ordered the raid carried out because he was convinced that stopping the heavy supply of processed cocaine and heroin from that district was far more important than the lives of those involved. Of course, the President undoubtedly did not expect women and children to be involved, but he did expect human beings to be the victims of the raid he was authorizing. We have copies of the presidential appointment logs showing a gap of thirty minutes in his schedule that day. While there is no mention of Mr. Reynolds’s visit in those logs, Peru’s investigation has uncovered irrefutable evidence of that visit and has verified the details of what transpired, and it is this proof that forms the unshakable foundation of this warrant.”

Nigel White began to rise but Jay put a hand on his shoulder and stood instead.

“Judge, may I ask a question?”

“I can’t see why not, Mr. Reinhart,” the magistrate said sarcastically, “since we’re apparently making up a new criminal procedure here as we go along. By all means, proceed.”